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PurposeThe paper seeks to assess the performance of 234 public and private water and wastewater utilities from industrialized and developing countries.Design/methodology/approachA group of financial and operational indicators was calculated for the sample utilities.FindingsSome indicators calculated for the private sector, represented by US and UK water and wastewater utilities, demonstrated better values compared with public utilities, such as staff number per 1,000 connections and return on equity ratio and tariffs charged. On the other hand, the percentage of unaccounted‐for water and the debt to equity ratio evidenced no advantage in private over public utilities. Further, the performance of water and wastewater utilities of developing countries and Egypt does need improvement.Originality/valueA key problem in most of water and wastewater utilities is the absence of performance assessment tools. To this end, this research utilized indicators as a means of performance assessment of water/wastewater utilities.

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The key problem in most of the water and wastewater utilities is the absence of performance assessment tools. This research utilized the calculation of a group of financial and operational indicators for a sample size of 117 public sector utilities located in the USA, Egypt and developing countries. These indicators are then used to depict the performance of the Egyptian utilities as compared to the sampled utilities. Practical application: The results furnished by the group of the indicators included in the study relay the performance of the Egyptian utilities in comparison to the USA utilities and utilities in developing countries. The results also indicated the resemblance in some performance aspects between the water and water/wastewater utilities in Egypt and the remaining developing countries studied. On the face of it, a significant gap was noticed in most of the results between Egypt and the USA. As an example, the return on sales of Alexandria Water General Authority (AWGA) was less than that of the USA water utilities by 60%. Furthermore, the average tariff charged in the USA was higher than those charged in Egypt by 95% while the tariff charged across the developing countries exceeded the Egyptian tariff by 66%.